How do I find out what customers will actually pay without just asking them?
Asking "what would you pay" gets you a polite fiction, so use structured methods instead. Van Westendorp gives you a sensible range, Gabor-Granger and multiple price lists test specific points, and discrete choice analysis tells you what people trade off, which is usually the most useful thing you can learn. Run these on real buyers in your segment, not on everyone. Alongside the survey work, mine what you already have: how often you win on price, how fast deals close at different price points, what people actually use. And run pricing as a habit rather than a project. A one percent improvement in price can move profit by a lot more than one percent, which is why the best teams revisit it every couple of quarters.
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Four actual research methods (Van Westendorp, Becker-DeGroot-Marschak, Gabor-Granger, discrete choice) explained well enough to run one yourself, with templates. This is the answer to "how do I find willingness to pay without asking people what they would pay".
Shows how average contract value really grows as a company scales from seed to IPO, and makes the case that most of the gain comes from usage and packaging rather than straight price rises. Changes what you go and fix first.
Segments Indian pricing properly (metro enterprise, Tier 1 SME, Tier 2 and 3 SMB) with the discount each expects, and says the quiet part out loud: budget for a 20 to 30 percent negotiation on almost every Indian deal and set list price accordingly.
Ramanujam gives the actual question sequence for willingness to pay conversations, which is how you find the number without asking customers to name one. The leaky bucket and the four ways to ask are worth stealing verbatim.
